Bombay High Court upheld the Constitutional validity of an amended section of the Indian Penal Code under which repeat offenders in rape cases can be awarded life imprisonment or death penalty. A division bench of Justices B P Dharmadhikari and Revati Mohite Dere dismissed petitions today filed by three convicts in the Shakti Mill gangrape case challenging Constitutional validity of the legal provisions under which they were sentenced to death in 2014.

Under an amendment to section 376 (e) of the IPC, repeat offenders in rape cases faced life imprisonment or a death penalty. The amendment was made after the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi in 2012.The Judges observed that section 376 (e) of the IPC is not ultra vires to the Constitution and hence need not be quashed in the Shakti Mills case.

In 2014, all the three convicts of the case were sentenced to death by a sessions court for the gangrape of a photojournalist in 2013. The same year, the three were also convicted for raping a call centre employee. Both the instances of gangrape had taken place in the Shakti Mills compound in Mumbai.